Batteries aren't the only way to store energy. Here's another.
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- Опубликовано: 19 июл 2021
- "Reduce emissions and save the grid with this one weird trick!!!"
-Confucius
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Hey! I realized that I pretty much only talked about the residential side of things and left some of the tactics commercial buildings use until the very end. Well, here’s me now saying that this is by no means something we can’t apply wherever it would work. In fact, many commercial buildings are doing pre-cooling already when it makes sense for them. None of the ideas presented here are new, exactly.
But I do think there’s a lot of potential here specifically when it comes to getting use out of renewables. “Make hay while the sun is shining” is a perfect expression, here. In some areas we’re already running into issues where there’s so much solar capacity that we can’t use it all. Rather than wait until we have more electrochemical batteries at our disposal, perhaps we can use all this thermal mass we have.
The key thing about insulation is that it slows the transfer of heat. That means it buys you time. The challenge of renewables has always been that the time of production doesn’t match the time of consumption, but with more intelligent control and awareness of a building’s thermal capacity, ability to pre-heat and pre-cool, and the tolerances of its occupants we have a pretty flexible tool for shifting consumption right now.
ok
There is only one problem that I can see with this. That is that the rate of heat transfer is proportional to the difference between indoors and outdoors. This means that over cooling at night can make power consumption go up.
@nebuchadnedzzar to be clear I do it at night because I don't have any solar output that I can take advantage of, and there's not much of it on our grid yet. Overcooling at night is what _I'm_ doing, but it's not where I'm suggesting we go with this.
(edit to add): The other thing to consider is that if I run my air conditioner when it's really hot outside, the higher condensing temperature of the refrigerant makes it work harder. I'd need to do some experimenting to confirm this, but if the total amount of energy I'm pulling out with my cool-only-at-night strategy were equal to keeping the thermostat at a constant, say, 70 or 72, I think it would actually take more electrical energy. A larger load on an air conditioner makes its energy consumption go up, though not necessarily drastically.
There are so many places to store thermal energy in commercial buildings. Think about the all the water piping and just mandating upsizing it by an inch. Concrete floors...
This is a great explanation and demonstration of the monetary gains homeowners can achieve by looking at the home with a fresh outset. Well explained and thorough.
Well done.
People forget that insulation works both ways, gets pretty crazy hot in Scotland these days but still cool at night so I open my windows at night and close them in the morning to hold onto the cool temperature during the day
I've been doing that here in mich for the last 10 years.
Same in California
Living in a passive house for 10 years, that's exactly what I do. Unfortunately, there is more a more noise outside during night, which start to be really annoying.
Annyway, insulation is the key. It is cheap, reliable, and almost maintenance-free.
Cool seeing you here, never would’ve thought an r6 creator top comment on this channel
I live in an Adobe house in southwest Colorado. Very dry climate but nights are cool. If I leave the windows open overnight then shut them early, house stays under 75 on a 95 degree day (freedom units)
When you said you were using your house to store energy, I was hoping you had converted the entire upstairs into a big swimming pool, with a mini turbine and pipes to the backyard pool.
I was thinking about some heavy weights bound to a pulley with some kind of gear reduction/transmission hooked up to a motor. Motor powers up during night to pull them up, slowly drops them down during the day generating constant input for the rest of the house.
@@PFAlt I came up with a gravity battery concept that I'm getting ready to toy around with. My house is a rental though so I can't actually use it and it'd be entirely prototypical.
If you have solar panels installed you could use it to store potential energy that is discharged in low light conditions. I'm certainly not the first to come up with it but it feels good to come up with something before you heard about it.
You mean using solar power to pump water up during the day and then releasing it at night?
I thought he was somehow heating it up then converting the heat back into electricity
@@whogavehimafork the energy density of gravity batteries is very low. They're better for large-scale applications.
I’m an HVAC contractor and have been promoting for years that customers take advantage of cheaper electric rates in the evening by over-cooling. It’s so rewarding to hear you reinforce my recommendation.
It takes less than 3 hours for our house to go from 72f to 85+ in the afternoon. It's not possible to pre-cool enough.
@@cheyannei5983 Is your house very well insulated? Double/triple glass windows with reflective coating and proper wall/roof/floor isolation should make a ton of difference. The whole concept of pre-cooling does not work at al unless your house is insulated well.
@@cheyannei5983 it really depends where you live, if your house is shaded and what the insulation and windows are like
***laughs in Floridian
@@cheyannei5983 More insulation not joking. I've lived in both and a heavily insulated one dramatically slows that temp change down
An example of how dramatically your house's insulation could affect how quickly your house keeps in the cold/heat is the work cup I used for work. I started out using a big 1 gallon plastic water bottle (good quality) and would prefill it with ice all the way to the top then top it off with ice cold water.... By lunch time 4 hours later my ice would all be melted and the water luke warm/barely cold. It was never in direct sunlight btw.
THEN I upgraded and got a 1.5L metal water bottle (I think eddie bauer) good quality but still cheap. I would prefill with ice and then by lunch even in 100+ weather it would still be filled with ice... I'd drink all the water (2 bottles worth) then refill it multiple times (6 bottles worth after the original filling) and it would STILL have ice by the end of the 10 hour day.
Just thought I'd rant about that to let people know how effective precooling could be on a well ventilated house vs one that's not. My house would literally take 3 hours to go from 90 to 76 but at the same time would go from 78 to 85 within an hour of turning off the air.
Exactly what i was about to comment. My house is so old that this strategy would probably lose me more electricity than anything, due to the poor insulation. I have to rotate which door lock i use in the summer and winter because my door will shift so much that it will misalign with the locks 😂
Yes, unfortunately in poorly insulated houses the best strategy is to limit as much as possible the use of AC
Is Technology Connections finally going to show me how to install a giant flywheel in my apartment?
"No, don't stick your fingers in th...😬🙈"
That's probably a job for Colin Furze
Great album, space ritual!
That was my first thought when I saw energy storage.
And in the winter, the friction losses wouldn't be losses because they would only warm your house up.
Bringing new meaning to
"CLOSE THAT FUCKING DOOR YOU'RE LETTING THE AC OUT"
EDIT: (I love how it's my DUMBEST comments that get the most likes, thanks. lmao)
You sound like my dad...
@@davidc1961utube mine too, bud.
Now I sound like my dad🤣
My door doesn’t have to be open for the AC to escape lmao
"what, are you trying to air condition the world?"
The heat pump in my home is heating up a tank of over 250 gallons of water. It can store about 50kWh of energy for heating the house and hot water for the shower and the tabs. It’s a pretty simple system even though one room in the basement looks a bit like the engine room of a submarine.
Can you tell us more about that? What's the brand and does it work in winter? Can it reverse and make a 250gallon of ice cold water too?
Most people don't have a basement. Your tank is just a buffer tank, nothing special, just somewhat bigger than usual.
Yeah, I have a water heater too.
The same in my house.
@@itsROMPERS...heat pumps have a >1 CoP. Meaning they are more efficient than electric heaters.
We started doing this over a decade ago. As an 'adventurous' individual (and in the HVAC industry...) I was browsing through our utility providers website looking at rate plans. They never advertised it, but had time of use available for residential customers. The account rep told me that the people that would benefit from it usually are the ones that go looking for it to begin with. Our TOU is fixed in the afternoon. The thermostat runs at 72 most of the day but two hours before TOU, it drops to 67 and then to 80 once TOU kicks in. After ten plus years, it's just a way of life. Now, the concept has been marketed for a few years with utility tstats available to adjust automatically.
It's really a great way to save money and energy...but the howling on social media by people who don't understand how it works about how it's a huge invasion of freedom and privacy for the utility to adjust their thermostat is hilariously sad.
My dad’s AC energy savings method was to just never turn it on
At this point I could save the cost of a new house by not having an AC at all, too bad the summers are unbearably hot and I cannot save money that I never had.
We use a similar approach in the UK. We don't even install it in the first place. I'm in my 50s and I've never been into a private home in the UK that was air-conditioned.
@Vap Pri only problem is some places you could straight up die in your home without cooling simply due to humidity it will cause you to sweat to death the uk happens to be one of those places where it isn't getting that hot
@Vap Pri spam.
fantastic logic
Running AC during the night has a further benefit - the cooler outside temperature means the AC runs more efficiently, so you get the same amount of cooling for less electricity.
It also dampens the neighbor's sound pollution! Now that's efficiency.
all while spending less money ! (though small , savings are savings!)
Wait you guys can afford aircon up there? 😂
Came here to say the same thing. He is even smarter than he thinks :D
Ah, no. That's not the least bit true.
This reminds me of when I was in college living in a crap rental house with no ac. I would use box fans on opposite ends of the house to create something of a wind tunnel. I did this all night long and woke up at dawn to close all the windows. It would trap the night cool air inside and worked remarkable well.
That's basically roman air conditioning. Except they used wind-traps on the roof to catch night breezes, as they had a very limited supply of box fans ;)
I'd argue that 0 is non existent rather than limited, but to each their own
@@DanielSultana No appreciation for my humor.
@@kathrynck i was doing a your joke but worse kinda joke
@@DanielSultana ohhhhh, I didn't pick up on it. I guess I get the "woooosh" :P
I have been struggling to find a way to better manage electricity costs as an Iowan, and I need to say you have been a lifesaver to me. Using things from this and your heat pump video have helped me cut my utility bill by 38 percent
That's a lot!
"Heat pumps for the win"
That is the biggest takeaway from this channel, by far
how did u leave a comment a day ago
@@twistedwhiskers8776 different time zone
@@AnteMimicaMiMe i don't think i did it like this before
@@twistedwhiskers8776 Patreon supporters get access to the video early
Heat pumps
ecuperation way too good. You can heat up or cool down any place by just shuffling air around using passive ceramic or otherwise heatsinks and switching air pathways. After the whole setup the running cost is practically nothing for home use. 5000 times cheaper than having air conditioning.
A friend was rebuilding a greenhouse that originally had a 2'6" brick wall with the glass structure built on top of the wall. He then bought a second hand aluminium frame greenhouse that fortuitously fitted over the brick wall, leaving a four inch gap between the wall and the glass.
This wall made a great heat storage device. It made for a really good passive heater. At its location in the UK I estimate that my friend gained almost two months growing time in this greenhouse without any extra heating.
The brick walls heated up in the day and radiated heat at night, it had automatically opening roof windows that used the expansion of wax in sealed tubes to open them. He was able to produce very good crops of tomatoes, chillis and other vegetables.
Designs like this are becoming more common. You can also find a greenhouse design that is using thermal energy from the ground.
@@snoopdogie187Yes, when I put up my own greenhouse I got twenty litre capacity dark colour bottles filled with water - ten of them to act as heat storage, it worked reasonably well, but wasn't as good as the brick wall heat storage.
Around twenty years ago I added a conservatory to my then house.. I made a thick concrete base with some 75cm pipes running through it. I then had another linked pipe going up to the conservatory roof and added a fan to pump the hot air through the floor pipes. This cooled the room a bit in the day but provided warmth from the floor in the evening.
If you have the room, a couple of 55 gallon barrels filled with water and painted flat black sitting in the sunshine will really help.
And if anyone would like to see a wax actuator in action and dissected, here you go. m.ruclips.net/video/MiADday0mDA/видео.html
@@peterjf7723 Heey this is a good idea, me now thinking how I can implement this.
The good news is,its low cost, and, yes I can see this will do something,...
Thanks.
11:07 You might have to watch out for condensation within the walls, not just on the windows. Not sure what your building code dictates there, but with high outdoor dew points, misplaced/missing vapour barrier and cold indoor temps, things can get nasty.
That was my thought too. Mold sucks.
If the house is only 10 years old he should be ok
If it's AC, then the air should be somewhat dry
@@byaafacehead It's true that AC does dry the indoor air, extracting moisture and lowering the dew point temperature of that air (though often the RH doesn't change significantly, as you're also lowering the temperature). The problem with very low indoor temperatures in hot humid weather is that you can get condensation within the building structure, not only on windows. The moisture there is coming from outside, not inside.
Most home have a vapor barrier.
I started doing this just over a month ago - it runs pretty aggressively, triggered by indoor temp and solar production. The house has been quite a bit cooler, and the first month's usage just came in at $-0.04. I do like the idea of not spending $5k on a huge chemical battery, so thanks for the inspiration!
I remember seeing water tanks painted black on the roofs of homes in Turkey. Throughout the day they absorb solar energy and heat the water inside, ready for evening showers and baths.
only problem is that cold showers are preferable in summer and hot showers are preferable in winter, when this system doesn't work.
More "fancy" version is some near vaccum tubes or old radiators running water, I seen those used to heat water and houses.
@@ABC-rh7zc i don't take fully cold showers during the summer, just warm, so it would still work for me :)
I had that in Austin in the 80's. Gave us an extra 50 gal of hot water.
@@ABC-rh7zc It is just extra capacity. You still have cold water in the summer, and in the winter the sun still shines. Run on a recirculation loop the warm-hot tank on the roof keeps the snow off it and still picks up a bit more heat.
You really give credence to that claim I saw online not too long ago:
"When someone complements something you own, as a Midwesterner you are obligated to inform them that it was purchased at a notable discount."
As a former Iowan, I already believed (and practiced) this. But you have turned that Middle American frugal attitude into an art form I can admire.
Looks to me less like a frugal attitude, and more like false modesty by expressing that you were not rich enough to afford it at full price.
Dude I can't stand people that do that... my brother in law got new boots and they were ugly af but I said "hey nice boots" and he goes "thanks 100 bucks"
For me it's competition for my father in law, who is a big time thrifter.
@@seigeengine It's not really false modesty. For people who aren't wealthy, it's just honesty, and it's a way of deflecting the discomfort from the false implication that you splurged on whatever nonsense they are complimenting. "Wow, what a beautiful cushion you have." "Oh, uh, thanks, I saw it on clearance and thought it looked nice." A lot of times it's also a genuine tip. "Oh, you think so? If you need some new cushions, you can get these at Pottery Barn for $14.99!"
For people who are wealthy, maybe it's honest and maybe it isn't, but it still deflects from the idea that they are flaunting their wealth. If they were really trying to do that, they would respond with "yes, this pillow cost me $200, but I think it's totally worth it." Since they definitely aren't, they'll give an excuse for having a seemingly expensive pillow. It's almost an apology.
I guess it can be annoying, but I much prefer it to the people who advertise how expensive all their junk is. "Yeah, I'm hot shit, I just spent $500 gazillion on these limited rims."
That said, I find it very annoying when people point out that the mortgage on their mansion costs less than the rent for my 2-bedroom apartment.
Our utility provider does occasionally vary our house temps before the reactive state now. At a few peak days this summer we got an email that they would be cooling our house down a lot early on and then jumping up the thermostat high during the peak hours. They requested that we not override it. It worked out well on our end. The utility here doing it is AES Indiana.
We're doing the same with our ICF built home. Superior insulation, with the advantage of all the concrete that acts like a massive heatsink, allows us to run AC only at midnight. We don't have to make it that much colder, due to the walls their mass and capacity. Even during the hottest days the temperature doesn't get above 73, and we only need to cool down to 68.
Great video!
Please use SI temperature units instead of archaic nonsense so that the rest of the world understands what you are n about
I live in MA and I've been on a plan with my power company where they can change the temperature remotely for my AC. They do exactly what you suggest - set the temperature lower in the morning and then raise it in the afternoon to lessen load. I can always override and I still get my incentive if I override less than 25% of the time.
That's great! I'm hoping this idea spreads.
@@DyslexicMitochondria Hey bro I watch ur videos. Love your channeI
@@DyslexicMitochondria well that’s what the override button is for
@@DyslexicMitochondria This has been in place for a number of years without an issue. Again, I can override from the thermostat or remotely.
@@DyslexicMitochondria If the power company's system malfunctions, that's what the override is for. If your local system malfunctions - well, you'd have to do a hard reset (i.e. pull the plug) either way.
8:38 Me: Opens Google Tab to check what 74°F is in Celsius
TC: "Thats 23.3°C"
Me: Closes Google Tab
same :p
F is easy. 74 is 74% of the way to too fking hot from too fking cold
@@pXnTilde -- I disagree, 80°F is too hot, and 0°F is only comfortably cool. It routinely goes up to 100°F and down to -50°F here, the F scale isn't convenient as a comfortable range nor does it relate to what driving conditions will be like.
@@TlalocTemporal do you live on fucking mars?
@@williamapodaca8614 I live in the Midwest and we see 90-100f air temp in summer and just a few years ago we saw -20 in winter (was -44 wind chill)
I like your family's nighttime cooling storage method for the many good reasons. You're blessed that Mother Nature made you some shade. If I may add an observation; so I turned our home into a refrigerator (of sorts) with quality time sealing ducts, insulating, radiant barriers, water sprays, and ventilation to remove heat and help keep humidity down to 40%. These efforts cut our unshaded home electric bill from $400 per month to less than $200 on a 4000sf home. I see generally the outdoor unit's compressor runs quieter when the ambient air temps are cooler at night. Appears that there is LESS work on the outside unit to heat exchange ! So, it makes sense that without the sun beating down on the outside unit, it runs to some percentage TBD more efficiently.
The shade was created by nature, yes, but planted and taken care of by men.
May I suggest you to look into adding trees to your lawn? I'd go for a native species if possible. Some species grow pretty fast.
Fun fact about that kind of pricing: Apartment complexes may decide you can only make so much noise between so-and-so hours. Mine are 10PM and 6AM. Due to the fact that my washer, dryer, washing machine, and shower all make enough noise to be heard in adjacent apartments it's a small problem to run those during those hours. This kind of pricing, while pragmatic from an energy consumption standpoint, is a bit bothersome if you're already cash-strapped and living in a collective housing situation - as most cash-strapped individuals do.
Something to consider my good man! Cheers!
What I learned was "oh yeah, some people live in houses that are less than 60 years old".
Retrofitting older structures to meet modern energy standards is one of the most important things we can do in the immediate term.
@@TechnologyConnections that costs money and people don’t want to do that.
Haha 160 year old house here, I've done what I can but the costs can be massive.
And so many landlords dont care, they see their building as permanent.
or, "some people live in houses"
The most shocking part of this video was that your home isn't already absolutely covered in heat pumps.
Really in the winter natural gas is still cheaper. Having said that I don't have natural gas and am thoroughly enjoying the heat pump I installed.
@@shadowwolfmandan Is it really? Where? Here in EU the price of electricity varies, but in my country is around 10c/kWh. Using quality heat pump with SCOP more than 3. you can easly get below 3c/kWh. Natural gas here is around 5,5c/kWh.
@@au9879 depends where you live in Canada for example. In Alberta natural gas is WAAAAY cheaper. In Quebec....its 3x more expensive on average. And ironically would be cheaper if there was a pipeline from the primary oil deposits to the eastern refineries. But Justin Trudeau would rather import Saudi oil to Quebec. a country that has significantly less investment into environmental impacts and standards of extraction. Along side 1 oil tanker creates about the same amount of pollution in a year as 35million cars.
@@au9879 32ct average in germany. What tf is wrong with this country
@@laurean5998 Probably the reason why Merkel wants Nord Stream 2. Though cheaper Russian gas comes with a lot of geopolitical headache given that Putin really doesn't want to pull out of my home country and return Crimea.
Simple and elegant! Nice.
We're planning a small solar installation and simply plan to dump the energy in our hot water using that as a thermal battery.
Most reasonable channel on RUclips. Always entertaining and refreshing to watch your videos
Your A/C is even working more efficient as the outside temperature is lower in the night.
Side note: As an added bonus, your AC unit is more efficient at cooling when the exterior temperature is lower. Cooling your house during peak exterior temperature (like practically everyone does) is additionally inefficient that way as well. Cooler exterior air = less electricity for the same amount of cool.
But that doesn't account for the obvious heat seeping back into the house before peak temperatures occur, to combat this the A/C must be ran excessively to make the house super cold. Obviously in total doing this would consume MORE energy but it consumes the cheaper energy due to how our grid is configured.
I'm in the PNW and we have a couple strategies in our very old house.
1. Over the biggest windows, there's an arbor with grape vines-- this means no leaves in the winter, and plenty of shade in the summer.
2. The temp differential here during the dry summer months is such that most of the summer, we can just open everything up at night, let the breeze cool the house, and close it up in the morning, keeping the heat out for the rest of the day.
3. During the winter, we never have the thermostat over 65, but use a lot of blankets and sweaters and hoodies. We don't have peak pricing for energy here, because it's mostly hydropower/wind/solar, so at night we turn it down to 60.
4. Rather than cooling the whole house, we air condition the south-west facing bedroom. I put it on eco when I leave the room, and it gets up to about 78, and then put it on auto cool at night as soon as I'm up there, The room stays tolerable, I can deal with the rest of the house being warm, and it doesn't usually get that warm. During massive heat waves, this means we have a comfortable place to take heat breaks, but are air conditioning a huge old house.
This is such a great idea and I love it. Personally the idea I've been playing around with that's very similar to ice storage air conditioning but takes advantage of close to effectively free energy is a big thermal mass likely in the form of a good sized well-insulated container of water and having the water cycle through a big exposed loop during the coolest hours of the night to cool the water down and then store that cool (negative) energy, and then cycling the water through a similar loop inside the house to cool and overcool the tank of water and house as needed. This could be done as a closed loop in more humid environments and/or where the water can't be replaced easily and cheaply and as evaporative cooling in dryer climates when the water can be easily replaced. This system could also probably be used in reverse to help keep a house warm in winter especially at night by heating the water up during the hottest parts of the day and having it cycle through the house as needed especially at night, heating and overheating the water tank and house a bit during the hottest part of the day. Like the recent return idea of putting sails on massive cargo ships this method wouldn't even have to provide all the heating and cooling for a house; simply offsetting the energy usage would be a big help especially since the materials costs of such a system would be so low and thus the length of time for the system to pay for itself would be so short. All you're really talking about materials wise is insulation, the water tank, the lengths of narrow copper or other piping, and some sort of pump to move to water. You could also power the pump with solar or another renewable if you wanted to reduce conventional energy usage to nothing. You could probably simplify this idea further by using a big water heater; it's already insulated and has the basic piping and thermometers and thermostats installed.
22:36 As an engineer, an overly simple solution that still meets the objectives IS the elegant solution.
Exactly, the simplest solution that gets the job done adequately is the best solution. You do have to define what "adequate" is in order to get a good result from this method, however.
Yea probably these sort of solutions deemed "not elegant" because of their simplicity suggest a certain lack of optimisation. Though, this isn't necessary the case - but being well aware just how complex things can get when optimised to certain objectives - makes any simple solution a suspect.
@@CraftyF0X The thing is, with good engineering, you need to know when to stop improving the thing and just build it. So you set a target for what's "good enough", and when you hit that target you don't add any more optimizations for that goal. You might work on reducing the cost of producing it, but you won't improve its effectiveness at performing its designed task, because that's wasted effort.
Also. Your AC is wayyy more efficient when it's cooler for the condenser!
In my town in Sweden the hospital is cooled down in the summer with snow from the winter since it's stored in a way that let it be snow even if it's hot outside. So a huge pile of snow is a good thing.
Just a follow up, a year later with time of day rates, and my bill has gone down by FIFTY percent, with around the same amount of usage overall. By the end of this year, watching this video will have seriously saved me around one thousand of dollars. So again, thank you.
Another benefit of running AC at night: The AC runs much more efficiently as the outside temp is lower than if you ran it during the day.
Exactly! I was wondering if he'd mention this but yeah the AC (along with the houses insulation in general) isn't fighting against the hot outside air at night either!
In a lot of places it would be perfectly adequate to just force out the hot air that's trapped inside.
@@jfolz *waves from the uk* basically nobody has AC here because we only need it 3 days a year (which is this week oddly enough)
Yes! And something else that cracks me up: running AC ducts through an attic that is considerably hotter than the living area.
@@jfolz indeed! not so much in illinois where I (and iirc him) live, humidity is just too high.
Im from Germany
Our "air conditioning" is opening windows in the morning to ventilate the rooms with cool morning air, keeping the shutters on the sunny side down during the day and hoping for the temperature to drop below 30°C (86°F) by the late evening.
But at least, rolling blackouts are not a thing here :D
my shutters dont work anymore :(
hilfe
Given the very hot summers we've had since we moved here (this year is a bit crazy, of course) less effective than previously. However, the heavy masonry houses here in Germany (our house has 40 cm exterior, 30 cm interior walls) make this a very viable option. If you can capture solar gain during the winter, it can also be veryeffective.
@@inyobill I call that the "European special". Why buy an AC if you could get a bunch of bricks, instead?
@@Gabu_ When its 35-40 during the day and 25-30 at night for a couple of weeks (this is the first summer in the Swisttal in about seven years we haven't seen that), it's hard to shed the heat from the masonry. In the Dachboden, with over 40 cm of new insulation, and proper sealing, it would be unliveable.
Tough when you get up at 7 and it's already 27°C.
Great video. I learned that most water heaters have two thermostats with heating elements.
One set is near the bottom where cold water enters and the other is near the top where hot water exits. They are usually set to the same temperature but I thought this could be manipulated to store solar hot water.
The water heater would have the standard switch between grid power at night and solar power during daylight. The top thermostat would be set to 120 degrees and the bottom would be set to 140 This means when the bottom heating element is on, the upper element would not come on and the water in the tank would be superheated.
The trick would be to put a timer on the bottom switch so it is only active during daylight hours
This means that the water would be superheated to 140 degrees when the sun is up and only 120 degrees when using grid power. If the power company offers off-peak rates, the lower element could come on during off-peak hours to top off the water when power is relatively cheap
There are problems such as intermittent low solar power availability during daylight hours and changes in sunrise and sunset times throughout the year. A simple system might have to brush over these issues and not be perfect but I could see a more complex programmed timer controlling the lower element that takes into account solar power availability
I really love these videos. They're very informative, and you have a very personable way of presentation.
"It's just like charging and discharging a battery, except the battery is made of water and gravity."
The rhyme of our generation, the electrical generation.
🔥🔥🔥
Yeah that was a great rhyme :D
Water, fire, earf 'n dirt, fuckin magnets, how do they work?
battery and gravity do not rhyme.
When I lived in a middle apartment, I never used heating or cooling. Weak neighbors are easily used.
LMAO
Last year I had direct sunlight through a huge window. That was a cheap winter!
@@worldcomicsreview354 And an expensive summer.
All of the above here. Very handy in winter, because it means the air-source-heat-pump-based heating/hot water system that it has can just about manage to keep things warm enough without resorting to "winter mode" (which basically means it activates a 7kW electric immersion heater), and in mild weather it stays a reasonable temperature with no heating at all, but right now we seem to have hit "summer" and there's no active cooling :/
My heated Floor has a Name... on his door right under me.
Very informative. I had never thought about this before. I live in a very hot part of the US and it's just been the norm for a very high electricity bill during the summer. I've been doing it wrong all along; I raise the thermostat during the day when no one is home thinking that it's not needed but then that means I turn it on immediately when getting home... during the peak hours!
The California Missions were built around the 1780's. They have 3 foot thick adobe walls that act as a thermal flywheel. The interiors stay cool all day. In the evening, the heat from the sun finally makes its way through the adobe to keep the interior spaces warm at night. That is passive air conditioning for sure.
I store my energy in a nice layer of body fat for emergencies.
Same. My cat will appreciated that some day... 😅
The American way 🗽
im a walking battery then
"That's no beer gut, that's a battery!"
I'm on the skinny side and one drawbrack is indeed often being cold.
Red flag 11:13 There is a mold risk in this you know. If you are getting condensation outside of your windows, this means that the temperature of the glass is below dew point of outside air. This also can happen on your vapor barrier (if you have any) or basically on any part of wall structure that is cold enough. This condensed moisture is not healthy for the house as it might soak your insulation and cause mold on your structures. So as an HVAC engineer I would not recommend setting internal temperature lower than the dew point temperature outside.
In central PA, the dew point is usually in the upper 70s to mid 80s. I keep my thermostat at 74 and have no problem with mold. On the flip side, if you're "super-cooling" at night to 66, I can see it being a problem.
In the entire state of Missouri, the dew point is often above room temperature. Its more than a little ridiculous, the ac on peoples cars continuously drip a visible stream of water, its that bad.
@@lobsterbark this water you are referring is drain warer from the evaporator. This is also how you dry the air. It is a different story to have condensation on walls (or outside your car windows) compared to the cooling coil which is cold by design and pretty much always under dew point.
@@pamike4873 I also run my AC at 75F during summer and heating on 71F during winter. I have to add that I think the idea itself is good, so run the AC outside peak hours as it will take time for the temperature to rise again due to thermal mass. However I use a different approach; I have solar panels that have output higher than my cooling demand and sell excess electricity to the grid, so I only help even the load during peak hours.
@@pamike4873 also the humidity is usually over 70% in PA, closer to 90% if it rained a lot, which may or may not be a factor
great practical and useful application of low pass filters and feedback loops :) this is a really nice and practical lecture!!
I guess now that you explain it I have been doing the same A/C method as you. Although I will be the first to admit that I only started doing this because I like to sleep when it is cold in the house for health reasons. We have also started planting trees for shade two years ago. Keep up these great videos!
This guy actually has an energy consumption strategy. Most people can't figure out how to navigate a 4-way stop.
even worse when the traffic light is out.
Or a 3-way switch
Reason number 247 why drivers education classes should be mandatory to get your license
Most store shoppers don't know roughly how much their purchases are, and often don't have enough or want to the total.
To be fair, 4-way stops are pretty bad. Replace with roundabouts for safety and improved traffic flow.
bruh that dude installing a solar panel was wearing an exo skeleton. Are we just ignoring that?
Yup. HAL created by Cyberdyne. Not joking. 2001: A Space Odyssey meets Terminator.
HAL stands for Hybrid Assistive Limb.
I opened comments just to see if anyone else saw that
Are we ignoring right before that a person is setting their thermostat into the 40s?
@@GumbyAndrit same
Yea I was lol whaaaat ? I quickly rewinded to take a look and I had to conclude that it is indeed was an exoskeleton probably with the function to ease to physical load on the worker. Now, I don't know wheter it was just a futuristic representation of someone's vision on the future of PV workers, or a real commercial application.
My utility (somewhere in West Texas) just implemented that last week! They had an Energy Saver Event, as they call them, this past Friday and they set the thermostat to cool my house before the event to a temperature based on my schedule for later that day
VERY good points made, great contribution, thank you!
Just got this from my electric company in MD (BG&E):
"Get paid for doing your part.
Through Connected Rewards, your smart thermostat temperature will automatically be adjusted by a few degrees during select summer days when the demand for electricity is highest. To keep you cool and comfortable, your home may be pre-cooled slightly ahead of these adjustment events."
Sounds like a partial implementation of your plan. I like your idea of using the volume of the house to "store" cooling when it is cheap and I've been trying it informally. At some point I plan to reprogram my thermostat to give it a more rigorous try.
Woah, BGE being smart for once.
Uh huh.
Never give the electricity company control over your thermostat. All they will do is make you sweat to cut costs.
@@orppranator5230 But they aren't earning anything from selling me electricity when they switch of my AC.
Same here in SoCal with Edison. They will pre-cool the house before the 'energy rush hour' event.
@@MarcelTransier instead, they're losing money by driving the generators out of peak efficiency.
"Sounds great!" I think, sitting in a 100 year old house with a 50 year old heating system.
My 120 year old house has two heating systems, one based entirely on burning wood and the other one is a modern one i put in last year.
I kept the old one, because i still like to use it for room heating, the smell of the wood makes me feel comfortable.
@@Blubbstock that’s so cute!
@@Blubbstock we bought a house last year to rent to our daughter and son in law. The house is literally 100 years older than our daughter. We had two of the modern heat pumps installed, that each run two room heating/cooling units.
But living in Minnesota, where sub-zero high temperatures are still a thing in the winter, we were advised to keep the old boiler that works with the baseboard radiators.
And…
The even older floor to ⬇️ ceiling vents that allow warm air from the main floor to rise upstairs to the bedrooms.
The previous owners added a layer of foam board insulation between the original sheathing of the house and the new siding.
@@tanya5322 I inherited this house from a passed away family member. He was a very old man in his 90's which did not care about technology. The electric installation was made in WW2 and the basement has an air raid shelter door.
In the basement there was a boiler which uses wood to heat up water and for space heating there is a giant tiled stove in the dining room. It is large enough to heat most parts.
We had to replace all pipes, since the old ones were a bit faulty and also contained lead. We put in a new electric boiler for the water, but kept the old tile stove for space heating. Wood is pretty cheap here. Electricity in germany is super expensive.
We also added an AC for the living room, because Bavaria can get pretty hot in the summer.
I live there alone with my wife and we have our small own business there with electronics repair workshop. But the house is still a bit large for two people.
Same here. Someone tried to inject foam insulation in the balloon framed walls in the 70s or 80s (when the house was a mere 50 or 60 years old). Over time that insulation pulled away from the walls and fell into the basement where it continues to crumble away and form large voids. Our heating and cooling strategy is to just set the temperature at a reasonable level for the amount of energy we want to consume, then let it run.
Very well explained you definitely done intensive research
Travelling in US I've often been taken by surprise by the insanely heavy use of cooling provided. I especially remember a conference in Maryland, during a lovely summer where I had to buy extra shirts to stand the AC during sessions. In all breaks I stormed outside to recover some of the lost body heat.
In the conference they do that to keep you wake.
@@juanvaldez7279 They say that but all the data indicates that cold air puts you to sleep.
As an HVAC tech, I learned a lot from this and now I can't wait to learn more about the passive house! Love these vids.
Are you guys not taught this stuff as part of your training? If not then the training system is letting you down.
@@donaloflynn They are trained to install and maintain HVAC equipment, not to teach people how to use it.
@@donaloflynn Tell me you use reddit without saying it
@@donaloflynn Unfortunately my education was quite limited. I went to a cheaper school and got almost zero hands on training, and the teacher glossed over the more scientific parts of the trade.
I'm learning a lot more in the field now though. It's been a year since I graduated and I learn most stuff on RUclips or in the field.
Passive?
Wow that substation clip is awesome because I grew up right around there and rode my bike past it up that canyon several times a week for many years.
Great video, I wish I could use it! This sort of thing in my area would require a huge investment in insulation to make it at all possible. Right now its 2pm in August in California, and my apartment was built in the 70s. My energy providers rate plan has higher rates from 4pm to 9pm. They charge 44c per hour non peak, and 52c per hour peak.
I cooled my apartment to 73 degrees at 12pm, and it was 76 degrees by 1pm. Old windows, upstairs, and no trees blocking the roof. I would love to be able to use this technique, but at 3 degrees an hour it would be to 80 degrees inside by 1pm.
The best I can do right now is cool it to 70 degrees or so by 4pm, and cut out an hour and a half or so of peak use until 6pm. (I also just cool the single bedroom in my apartment, I leave the door shut to my living area) College town so no landlords are investing in anything nice like modern insulation anytime soon.
Having lived offgrid for most of my life this is just the norm for me. Once you have to generate and store the power you need you learn really quickly how much power everyday appliances use.
I love how you explained this topic and look forward to more videos from you in the future, keep up the good work.
Our house was built in 1951. When we bought it 25 years ago it still had the original single pane wood windows that swelled/shrank, leaked air, sweat and frosted over in the winter. About 5 or 6 years after we bought it, we had all new double pane low E windows put in. Also about 6 or 7 years ago the air conditioner started having issues, so we had a new high efficiency furnace and AC unit installed. We have also put in all new entry doors (3) and insulated garage doors. We've spent well over $25,000 to save energy/money. Also, we had a new roof put on last year because our old one was worn out and needing replaced, but we spent extra money to put on a roof that is supposed to help with energy savings. It takes a long time to make that kind of money back in energy savings. I'm pretty sure that we may never break even.
We could have spent more money, for even more "savings", but I don't know how much more "money" we can afford to save.
A lot (I would bet that most) people living in older houses can't afford the expense of retrofitting their houses to bring them up to modern day energy standards.
61% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, so yes, a majority of Americans don't have any capital for improvements. I kept thinking about my mom's single-wide trailer and that even if I had the money for improvements, it seems really silly to pull the whole thing apart to add insulation. Would probably be better to add a vertical wind turbine on top and call it a day.
And my 7th-floor apartment with a wobbly sliding door to the balcony isn't doing me any favors. At least heat pumps are standard on the building.
We just got a home built in 1973/1974. Still has original single pane windows with aluminum frame and individual panes of glass (6 over 6, has glass squares/rectangles with aluminum strips between them).
Winter time they sweat and drip all over the windowsills. Summer time they radiate heat right through.
Original insulation.
We are already fixing to get a new roof, and I'll be putting the plastic shrink film over all windows..... They're on the "list" but they're gonna be mighty expensive!
@@Nukepositive you don't pull it apart, it is just blown in.
I don't know how much more "money" we can afford to save... haha
Spending $25K to save money on energy costs and then realizing that you won't save a penny is really heartbreaking... and poor planning. The person who buys your home will either thank you for investing in their future or shrug as they demolish the entire building.
I held on to my old faithful oil boiler (home heating) for years, and I love it...but the price of home heating oil keeps rising and the new bio diesels have not been cheaper or accessible. The extra yearly expense for oil means that I will see a return on my investment in a few years.
Exactly what you are saying I have been telling my wife. Cool everything in off peak? The house will be cool all day. I insulated my windows with a silver foil bubble wrap on my western windows. I put a shade cloth like an awning to make it darker. I even put a silver sarking foil curtain a metre away from all west facing windows. I dropped the temps by 10 degrees Celsius in Australia. I've been an electronics teacher for over 10 years. But women are stubborn!!!! I setup solar off grid with 1000 watts in solar and 4 105 AH batteries? Interesting tutorial. Cheers from Australia 🙂
I really liked this video! Thank you for the informational content you provided me today. :)
Air flow management is basically all we had for a few years. Draw air on the shaded side of the house and exhaust on the sunny side. About halfway through the day we would switch it. Combined with proper window shades, it was very effective.
Yet most of the new houses in Texas don't even do this basic thing
@Cian O'Flynn This is only feasible in places where temperatures actually cross comfortable territory for significant lengths of time during the day or night for most of the year, though.
@@hmosh Texas has a horribly antiquated energy code to protect gas polluter profits.
So, no humidity where you live or do you just adapt?
@@donovan2913 we get terrible humidity. The air flow just keeps it all moving
Running AC at night would also be more efficient in general too wouldn't it? With lower temps outside it would be easier for the condenser to reject heat.
Yes. Only no answers would be if it were cold cold. In ambient temperatures drop to 40⁰ and lower most residential aircons run into problems (unless its a heat pump in heating mode ofcourse👍) and damage your compressor. Its called "slugging a compressor " funny name. Basically what happens is this:
Compressor is made to pump gas/vapor, so, if temp drops low enough to cause the heat in the low pressure gas to leave fast it will condense into a liquid. This is bad news since liquid doesn't compress. When liquid enters the compression area (could be a piston, scroll, or rotary type), it damages the parts that do the compressing and eventually crumble those parts into chips and chunks.
Fun fact. To get around this happening in Commercial applications they toggle the condenser fan via pressure switch in refrigerant line. Also the put this giant hose clamp around the bottom of the compressor that is a heating element that warms the compressor and oil to a good operating temperature in low ambient conditions.
@@joshmiller7870 Probably you dont need AC if the outside temperature is around 5C.
@@collan580 personaly myself, no need. However in commercial buildings this common practice.
@@collan580 Because of uneven heat distribution. Some rooms will still need heat rejection. I have servers at home, and even in the winter that room will need to be actively cooled. It isn't efficient to dump heat into the air then have the A/C remove it later.
@@henryzhang7873 Most people dont have servers though and if you do have one, maybe a smart system can be implemented to use that cold outside air to keep those servers cold.
I'm helping my folks right now reinsulate the house. It was built by a dingbat who used paper blow-in that's now settled, and being in Michigan means cold summers and hot summers.
They want new insulation, triple pane windows, and installing central AC to improve climate control, but I'm hoping to buy it from them, and when I do, I want to see about installing a geothermal heat exchange. Running heat-pipes through the house and down into the earth to wick away heat in summer, and draw up the consistent 65 F of the ground in winter. Plus of course solar pannels on the roof and outbuilding to just offset energy demand in general.
I know one house of millions won't make a lick of difference, but as said in this video; knowing I'm not burdening the system and keeping my carbon footprint down feels good.
I just gotta add something. We live in an ICF house in central South Carolina. 4800sq feet with a full basement and a massive slab. The heatpump condenser tripped it's breaker on Aug 30 (I have a power meter with several current sensors on it) and we never noticed. Until last week when the house dropped from 73F to 71F. For four months, the internal fan moved air thru our ducts within the house with no heat or cooling added. The only reason I noticed it was that it dawned on me that the fan was running full speed due to the 2degree temperature deviation. Thermal mass rocks!! Previously I had noted that when we got a cold snap the house took about 1-1/2 to 2 days to change the rhythm of the heat pump. If you ever wondered if you should build an ICF house, this is a darned good reason.
One item to also consider: By running the AC during cooler times outside, it is more efficient. Not only is the electricity cheaper, you need less of it.
As a grid operator, I enjoyed your video. You do great research.
Bravo! one step in the right direction. I really thought that was just common sense, you just turn on your heater and AC at night when electricity is cheap and turn everything off when electricity is more in demand. I went a bit further myself this year as an experiment, I didn't used any AC and almost no heater for an entire year. IT only works because I leave in a relatively temperate climat, but still. With outside temperatures ranging from 10°F (-12c) to 104F (40C), inside temp ranging from 46F (8c) to 95F (35c), I only used 1 heater 15 minute in the morning in the bathroom for a few days in winter, and took a few 30 sec showers during the hottest days in the summer. Crazy what you can do to regulate your body temperature with clothing when it's cold and some water and a little draught when it's hot. Anyone with no medical condition can do it and save the lives of people who can't by avoiding grid shutdown. my electricity bill was a little less than $460 (400€) for the year with and average rate of roughly 0.10€ per KW/H. Everything in my 3 room apartment is electric hot water kitchen stove and oven heater, AC...and I work from home with big computers running 24/7.
I'm so glad someone else other than me thinks the way you do. I have never overcooked as much as you but I do have 13.1 eec window ac units in my upstairs simply because I hate cooling my entire home at night. Saves a lot on my electric bills.
I have an ecobee but hate how I can't change the idle parameter for when I leave home.
18:43 this [alternative to batteries] has "a lot of.... potential"
I got a real charge out of that
In this current situation, this will be a shocker!
You forgot to put on you Sunglasses before the punchline. :-)
Here, take my angry upvote
I sense some resistance to this...
I would totally try this if I didn't live in a 70 year old house in Texas
Same
Insulation. Thermal barrier. (Attic foil is great!)
If your windows are leaky, adding storm windows will help a lot (The house I grew up in was about 100 years old but my parents added storm windows over the originals). Also temporary clear plastic can cut drafts losing cooling to the outside or cold air coming in winter
@@75OldsNinetyEight You can even do blackout curtains.
@@EliasTheHunter If he likes living there, why move?
Thank you for you great videos and the outtakes that reminds me, we're all just human!
Thanks for the sensible ideas and big picture relationships here. I'm so glad commercial ice cooling is a thing and programmed interconnected air con.
My father told me that there was a man called the ice man who would come to your place and sell you a large block of ice. Then the ice be put into the top shelf of the cooling cupboard to refrigerate your food.
"Assuming the buildings are somewhat modern, well-insulated and have good windows..."
THE UK HAS LEFT THE CHAT
(for _every one_ of those three assumptions, too, not just combined xD)
Most houses have cavity wall insulation, loft insulation and double glazing these days.
Hardly any have air conditioning of course. Also heating is usually gas based but the principle does apply for all-electric houses.
If you think it's bad in the UK, you haven't been to the US!
@@jbaidley yeah, I was amazed in Michigan to see several commercial buildings had ZERO seals on doors and there was a clear gap under the door so that light shined through! And as far as I know Lansign has a real winter, north enough.
I was not amazed to see basically same doors in Houston but come on, in Michigan! Did not have the possibility to visit anyones even semi-modern house but commercial buildings were really leaky, also the hotel was built like a haystack.
Heavy masonry houses tend to be more common in the UK (also here in Germany) than California, where I lived most of my life. These structures are fantastic as heat sinks, summer and winter.
Money is always spent on making homes look good. But the "invisible" materials which can't be seen - insulation, wiring, plumbing, foundation, etc - are always the first victims of cheap budgeting. If you don't have the money to build/buy a well-made home now then you'll have to pay the costs in other ways later.
**everyone starts doing this**
**night time is the new peak demand time**
It will also be when people charge their electric cars 🚗 🚙 🚗 so quite likely.
At the point that it equalizes between day and night people would stop having an incentive to switch - worst that would happen we just have a more even load throughout the day, which is better for nuclear and hydroelectric generation.
Need to remember Business power usage peaks during the day. Even if everyone did this at their homes most of those people go to work, it would never totally flip.
Gosh dangit, I said not to!
Maybe, but it shouldn't be as bad because it will be cooler outside.
I just started doing this a couple months ago after discovering a tiered rate option from my utility. Glad to know I'm not the only one that thought of this!
21:30 I have a 2002 Prius. Being the first of its kind, a fully electric air conditioning compressor likely would have been too costly. My Prius uses a conventional belt-driven A/C compressor, but it incorporates a "cold-storage" evaporator core to provide comfort during engine-off driving or sitting at a stoplight. When the combustion engine is running, the evaporator (possibly incorporating some sort of solution in it to store more cold) collects cold. When the engine turns off, the air stays nice and cold for about 1 minute. Once the evaporator warms up, the engine will start, run just long enough to build up a cold reserve in the evaporator, and then shut off again.
The contrast between Europe (in this case Germany) is so crazy, we almost dont have ACs here. Like we really don't have them but we do the same thing, opening the windows in the night to let cool air in and closing blinds during the day to keep the heat out. We do have different houses tho but it still buffles me to see the effort one puts into this
I know this comment is old now, but I wanted to share that I was equally baffled when I learned about Europeans opening/closing the windows to help with air control. As a Texan, I grew up not even considering opening any windows in the house, ever. During the summer it is 35C even at night, so there is no cool air to let in, only precious cool air escaping.
@@shinerai I guess that’s a different story then but in Europe you don’t have this kind of situation.
Yeah....that don't work with Texan heat lol
It regularly gets to 100°f here with 80% humidity or higher. I’d probably legitimately die without AC.
My room is the only upstairs room, but is still in the central AC loop, however, without my window unit, it still gets over 100°F in the summer. So I have a window unit on top of central air, plus a couple of fans. All to stay reasonably cool.
The window unit has an eco mode that means it runs way less at night though.
@@shinerai That brings the question - why are people living in Texas? LOL.
In the evening, I open the front AND back door. This creates a very slight cross breeze, but it is enough to pull hot air out of the house. I do mean "slight." I don't even feel it, but the hot air is drawn out. Thus, the house stays comfortable most of the daytime. I think modern people have forgotten the power of the evening cross breeze.
This is a nice idea that works up north. Here in south Texas during the late spring to mid fall the humidity stays around 90 to 100% and lows get to 80f at night with over 100f during the day.
Back in the 90’s (in Europe) my parents had a device which was basically an insulated box with around 300 kg of fire bricks inside. Those bricks were heated by a resistor over the night, when power was cheap. During the day, an air flow was created through this volume with a ventilator and vents in the box. We could heat our 90’s insulating standards house with this.
I'm not overweight, I'm an innovative energy storage solution.
actually, kinda yeah, evolution has worked our bodies to store excess energy when there is an abundance of food and use that fat when there isn't any
For your cats.
@@sehr.geheim literally yes. Also little creatures (or bastards, if you like to call them that) love your warmth :)
We all depend on you! Where would we all be without your farts that provide crucial natural gas during peak hours? HERO!
@@vynniev9611
I’d be thrilled by that. If it was a kitten, I’d give it thermal warmth, and it would give me emotional warmth! ☺️
You can create a "solar heater" by filling large barrels full of water and painting them black. Then you put those barrels in an insulated greenhouse
Thermal mass 👏
Then you live in the insulated greenhouse to profit off the solar heat.
Or get those solar panels/collectors and tie them into your warm water system directly.
@@noahluppe Yeah that's what the guy had in the video. It was pumped throughout the house and used for "hot" water
@@daze8410 I know them as connected systems, so the water heater and solar collectors are both connected to the same hot water tank, so even if the sun just makes a couple of Kelvin you save up on the heater's energy consumption.
Excellent... and your AC/HP works more efficiently when temps more closely match your thermal goal. I found a smaller HP (assuming the same effiency) does the job... run solid for maybe 4 hours instead of all day. In the NW, night temps are usually in the 40's or 50's. I simply installed a pair of large ventilation fans mounted in a box in a window opening. In winter the window is closed. At night they can draw that 50 degree air thru the house (whole house fan). It generally takes 3-4 consecutive days of high night temps to raise day inside temps above 80, usually 72 tops, so only need AC 4 or 5 nights a year. Electricity in the NW is cheap so I'll never get a payback on the money invested in my 1978 home, but it's good to know I'm using less.
Here on the swabian region in Germany, some houses have been using a similar technique for decades. But in the other way around. Here where I live we don't need to cool but to heat. Especially older houses do this by heating up some big bricks during the nighttime and then blowing air form the room through the rocks in the daytime. A special controller keeps track of how cold it is and decides how much the bricks will be heat up during the night.
But this technology seams to not be doing so well because it is mostly found in old houses like the one of my grandma. Newer houses mostly heat by burning fuel in the central heating system. The reason for this is probably that it is not so economically viable anymore and that it does not provide the same level of convenience as alternative. Sometimes the controller doesn't heat the stones leaving you with a cold house.
Another awesome video, Alec! Here in Sonoma County, California, we have a natural 'air conditioner' that runs most nights. It's called Karl, and it's better known as the San Francisco fog. Sun heats up the Central Valley, which causes air to rise. Since the Sierra Nevada mountains block air from the east, the rising air pulls air from the Pacific Ocean. During the day, the sun also heats up water over the ocean which forms the fog. So by the time evening sets in we get a nice natural blanket of moist cool air settling over wine country. Come to think of it, I guess it's more of a giant swamp cooler, but boy does it cool things down. At night, I open the windows and let the house cool, then close the windows before it gets warm during the day. Karl occasionally has a bit of a reliability problem, but he serves us well.
As another Sonoma County resident, we are fortunate to have such a cooling mechanism at night. For those unfamiliar, it's not uncommon for us to get 50+ degree temperature between day at night. That's right, it can get up to 100-110 in the day and will be down into the 50s most nights. There are rare tones (maybe once or twice a year) where it stays above 65-70 at night, but it's incredibly uncommon.
@@KiwiandPixeltheParakeets yup the same thing happens in the majority of the coast of California and Baja California in México because of the deserts we have towards the east and the mountain ranges, the fog helps vineyards and the production of some crops which are located in valleys where the fog passes through... but we also get the damn Santa Ana Winds.
Saludos.
I live in South Berkeley, so we tend to get Karl before anyone else in the East Bay. Huge plus in the summer, a bit brisk in the winter. Way better than Oklahoma where the nights would sometimes only cool to the mid-80s.
Karl seems like a good friend
@@KiwiandPixeltheParakeets How is the air moisture in Sonoma? Over here in The Netherlands whenever we get 110F / 38C it's the high air moisture that sucks the most :D
The Celsius conversion is very much appreciated! (:
Phil McCracken accurate would be 9/5 *C + 32, and the -40 is a thing.
@Phil McCracken yeah but most of the world doesn't want to have a calculator in the hand all day...
@Phil McCracken I've honestly just memorized every 10°C jump in Fahrenheit up to 40°C, and then from there go 2°F for every 1°C. It's off by 1°F when you get close to multiples of 5°C, but close enough anyway.
I just remember that each degree Fahrenheit is 0.55°C (recurring) and then guess wildly from there! I am often wrong
Thanks for watching.!
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+4=4=7=4=4=1=4=5=2=7=2=2
good ideas, fair play man!
love the outtakes lol
I have to say that is a pretty interesting way to go, although 66 is pretty burry for this tropical creature. I have to say that wouldn't do much for a Texas summer though when the night temp runs around 88-90° even. Obviously, there could be different solutions for different climates. Just some suggestions I also have for anybody watching: re-seal windows every 8-10 years, replace shoddy door weatherstripping, and each cooling season do or have done a backwash of the outside coils of the AC unit (dirt, grass, etc builds up in the fins). Those things can cut costs and keep things more efficient also. I have to say I had to scoff at the grid controlling your thermostat, so thanks for explaining why that is a thing and how that works. Still not a fan of it, but nice to understand the mindset behind it.
66 is cold for you? Lol my house is at 60
@@escapetherace1943 Blimey!!! That's terrible! I'll remember the eskimo parka if I'm ever over that way 🤣🤣
@@JadeDragon407 brother it's been under 20f all week
@@escapetherace1943 72F here as we speak. >>;=) You are safe from me harassing your frozen village
I literally dream about having a well-insulated home one day. Our current apartment is basically like living outdoors in the winter and way hotter than outdoors in the summer. 😑
Definitely add window blinds on the outside if you can, it helps a lot to keep out sunlight in the summer, and helps keep in the heat during the winter, if your windows are not well insulated.
Me too... Concrete block in-ground is a pain in the ass to regulate...
That's because sustainable apartment construction is 100% unregulated in the USA
@@timothylegg In this case, it’s because it’s in a house built more than 100 years ago 🤪
@@timothylegg
Why be energy efficient when the renters can waste money on electricity?
If I signed up for a variable rate plan, there would need to be some sort of price cap to prevent the $2000/month electric bills that some people got during the Texas winter event.
At that price, the Texas grid could have just joined the goddamn Eastern Interconnect and not had a problem. Remember that saying "united we stand, divided we fall"? Yeah.
@@DESUDESU24 Texas normally produces more power than it consumes due to the best wind power potential in the USA located around Amarillo, Texas. While they have been attempting to establish Eastern connections for the exportation of wind power the NIMBY land owner crowd has been a massive barrier to do so. It's more complex than you realize as some have legitimate arguments as some demanded wider clearance of forestry in the event of power line failure. Some demanded buried power lines.
Yes. I'll never trust a variable rate.
@@Cerberus984 It is even more complex than that. There are several tiers to bulk electric pricing, with long term contracts being the top tier and the spot market being the lowest tier. There can be as much as a 20:1 (potentially much more) difference between the two. In the Texas model (not common around the US) the interface between retail and wholesale are the entities sometimes called "power brokers." During extreme imbalances, such as when the wind does not blow but demand is high, power brokers may have to buy electricity on the incredibly expensive spot market; the prices are not so much set by the generation facilities but by competition. That is what Texas saw during the Big Freeze: not a lot of generation facilities running but lots of demand.
Where I am it's just a set schedule instead of daily variable. It's still more expensive during peak hours, but it doesn't vary daily.
I used to work at BP in Houston. They build their HQ about 30 yrs ago with a pool of water under the parking garage so they could load balance the AC during the day.
This is a great idea. So practical and easy to implement
Thank you for giving the temperatures in celsius too!
You can remember 70F is 21C, anything above or below that is uncomfortable.
@@TTM77 that would've useful if 21c wasn't too hot for me. 15c is my comfy temp. And everyone is different
@@parca95 15c would murder me as a room temp, my joints hurt just thinking about it 🤣
It's great that we have the C⁰ temperature, even if it's confusing for American people.
@@parca95 15°C is your "comfy temp" ? ? ? Where ya from ....Shanghai ?
100% agreement! Sadly, even if "direct power company access to thermostats" was suddenly adopted everywhere unilaterally, I would expect a sharp rise in portable heater/air-con sales! (Because people.) ;-)
Seriously, though, someone else commented about living in MA (my home state! yay Mass.!) and not being penalised on a remote-controlled plan if they hit the override button less than 25% that month, which is a smart bit of marketing, and would probably obviate the need to cheat. (Clever, clever...)
This a problem caused by grid energy management mistakes....Not enough energy storage is the main one for wind and solar...
you mean because people don't like having the government literally in control of their own homes at all hours of the day and night deciding if you have enough social credit to have air conditioning today? yeah that's really terrible of people.
@@SlocketSeven The concept is regarding power *companies* though, which could be more insidious than the government seeing that their #1 motive is profits.
Honestly, I dont particularly feel inclined to let the government owned power company decide how I use the power we pay out the ass for. But then again, even in the coldest days of winter where I live its not cold enough to necessitate heating, so we just bury ourselves in blankets, ponchos, or other cold wear.
I've been doing a similar thing for about a decade,.in a house with an old style manual thermostat. Turn the AC to about 72 when I get home from work, bump it down before bed, and then shut the AC to about 80 after I get up in the morning. Normally, the house is still well below 80 when I would get home,
The difference in summer power bills pre-COVID and during two years of 100% telework are quite noticeable.
The same technique works in winter.
I'd consider a smart thermostat, but this is a rental.
Another trick i use is this house had an attic fan installed (built in 1970) before the owner installed HVAC. So, as soon as the outside ambient air drops below 80, I pop a or window open, run the attic fan for a minute or two, and flush the 100+ degree air that built up all day out of the attic.
Excellent Observations, well presented. Just like all your videos.